Guide · 6 min read
Vertical video basics: resolution, length and the first three seconds
Three technical decisions shape a short video before a single word is written. Getting them wrong is the most common reason otherwise good material does not travel.
Shoot and export at 1080 × 1920
Vertical video is 9:16, and for practical purposes that means 1080 pixels wide by 1920 tall. Anything smaller is upscaled by the platform and looks soft next to neighbouring videos; anything larger is downscaled anyway and only costs you upload time. Thirty frames per second is plenty for talking-head and image-led content.
Two mistakes are worth avoiding specifically. The first is exporting a horizontal video with blurred bars filling the top and bottom — it reads as repurposed content immediately. The second is placing anything important in the outer edges of the frame: interface elements, captions and the creator handle sit over the bottom quarter and the right-hand side, so the safe area for anything you want read is the middle of the frame.
Length: longer than you think, shorter than you want
The instinct with short video is to go as short as possible. For pure spectacle that is right. For anything explanatory it is not: a fifteen-second video cannot make an argument, so viewers finish it without having learned anything and do not return. A minute gives you room for a claim, an example and a conclusion.
A practical structure that fits comfortably into fifty to seventy seconds is six beats of roughly twenty words each. That is short enough that no beat outstays its welcome, and long enough that the video says something.
The first three seconds
The opening is not an introduction. Nobody scrolling needs to know what the video is about in the abstract; they need a reason not to keep scrolling. That reason is usually one of three things: a claim that sounds wrong until explained, a question the viewer cannot answer, or a concrete detail specific enough to be surprising.
What does not work is a greeting, a channel introduction, or a summary of what you are about to say. Each of these spends the only seconds you are guaranteed on material the viewer did not ask for.
A checklist before you export
- 1080 × 1920, 30 fps, H.264 video with AAC audio in an MP4 container.
- Nothing important in the bottom quarter or the right-hand edge.
- The first spoken line is a claim, a question or a specific detail.
- The video is long enough to make one point completely.